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Q&A: NPR’s Andy Carvin tweets news from afar

“What bothers me are sweeping generalizations that the Arab revolutions were social media revolutions.”

Andy Carvin

NPR senior strategist

Andy Carvin became known as “the man who tweets revolutions” during the Arab Spring.

Andy Carvin, NPR senior strategist. (David Warlick)

In his new book, Distant Witness, Carvin writes of the two years he spent following the revolutions from afar. This is an edited and condensed email interview about his book and experiences. (SUBMITTED)

During the height of the protests that began in January 2011 in Tunisia, and swept across Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria, the senior strategist for National Public Radio was aggregating reports from the streets, sending up to 1,000 tweets a day. Many of those days, he spent 18 hours in front of the computer.

In his new book, Distant Witness, Carvin writes of the two years he spent following the revolutions from afar. This is an edited and condensed email interview about his book and experiences.

Q: You are quick to say it is disrespectful to call the Arab Spring a Twitter or Facebook revolution as some have. Why?

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A: What bothers me are sweeping generalizations that the Arab revolutions were social media revolutions. Yes, social media like Twitter and Facebook played a role — and what role they played always seems to be a matter of debate. But I don’t know many people who were involved in these revolutions who would describe them as such ... real human beings had to march in the streets, protest against their governments and, in some cases, die for their cause. I don’t think their family members would consider their sacrifices part of social media revolutions. Ultimately, these were flesh-and-blood events, with social media among the tools that were used.

Q: And yet, you’ve written a book about tweeting the revolution.

A: I don’t see my book being a major part of the debates over how much social media played a role in the relative success or failure of these revolutions. Instead, I chose to focus on how many people in the Arab world used social media to share stories — stories that would have otherwise fallen through the cracks — and how I was able to work with my community of Twitter followers to cover the revolutions from an angle that wasn’t readily possible before the advent of social media.

Q: You hint in your book that people became addicted to the adrenalin of the protests, fuelled by the recognition that Twitter provides. Do you think there’s a risk of a generation becoming professional protesters?

A: If you look at history, it’s not uncommon to find revolutionaries splitting off into different factions once the primary goals of the revolutions have been met. Some decide to get into politics and work with existing institutions; others choose to remain on the outside until further goals are met. For example, on numerous occasions I’ve heard members of the Muslim Brotherhood say proudly that they’re not on Twitter. That doesn’t mean they’re luddites; it just means they’ve chosen to focus their energies on politics — getting out the vote, getting policies enacted, etc. And while they’re busy doing that, they point to others who continue cycles of protesting and tweeting, over and over. It’s very easy for Twitter to become an echo chamber and leave you with the impression that your message is the most popular one when in reality it isn’t.

Q: You say you were tweeting in your personal capacity and not as NPR’s social media editor or “senior strategist.” But how do you separate the two?

A: No, not exactly. I’ve never separated my Twitter activities between personal and professional. I don’t think that’s possible anymore — they overlap each other too easily. When I started tweeting about the first revolution in Tunisia, no one assigned me the task of doing it — I just did it because I knew people in Tunisia and found the story compelling. But it’s always been a big part of my job at NPR to experiment with social media platforms as newsgathering tools, so even if I wanted to separate the personal from the professional, I can’t.

Q: By the time you were tweeting about protests in Bahrain you were feeling some personal trauma, accompanied by the guilt of feeling that way when you were in front of a computer screen and not on the streets. Did you have to seek help for this? Do you think there is a risk that the public could experience the same from overexposure — or was it just the unique intensity of your coverage?

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A: I have no doubt that at times I’ve experienced vicarious trauma, not unlike people who witnessed the Sept. 11 attacks on television, or photo editors whose job it is to review new images sent in from a war zone. Human suffering is tough for anyone to manage, especially when they witness it in person. But social media and the Internet more broadly are exposing countless numbers of us to the horrors of war. There are images and videos I’ve seen that’ll haunt me for life — and I’ve heard my Twitter followers say the same about their own online experiences following the Arab Spring ... As for seeking help, I’ve approached it from a variety of angles. I have ADHD and am already on medications that can help with anxiety, and I think they’ve made a difference. I regularly talk with friends, family and colleagues about what I’ve experienced — I try not to bottle it up. And I talk about it online, as well, which has been very cathartic. In many ways, writing the book was the ultimate cathartic experience for me, because I was able to expand upon the emotions I experienced in a form that goes well beyond the confines of 140 characters.

Q: There is little doubt that Twitter is fastest at breaking news these days. But these types of tweets (ones without links) lack context. Isn’t there a risk that our understanding of events will become more and more superficial?

A: There’s definitely a risk that an individual tweet can be misleading due to lack of context. Perhaps it’s one person relaying a rumour — or maybe an eyewitness who observed an incident from only one specific angle. Or it’s a tweet that has all of its facts right, but may need to be fleshed out in multiple tweets ... That is why it’s not unusual for me to tweet hundreds of times during a breaking news story, because I’m constantly asking questions and reminding people what we know and what we don’t know.

Q: You argue that we should take away the term “citizen” journalist because denigrates what they’re doing. But in other instances in the book you use the term “citizen journalist/activist.” Do you feel there’s a distinction?

A: Yeah, I go back and forth on this one a lot. I often say I use it, but with reservations. The term has its pros and cons. It’s useful shorthand to describe people who aren’t professional journalists who happen to be committing acts of journalism. But I also sometimes hear pro journos using the term disparagingly. And depending where you live, the term “citizen” can be interpreted very differently. Unfortunately no one has come up with an alternative description that’s appropriately suitable.

DON’T MISS: Join Andy Carvin for a live web chat on Friday, March 1 at 11 a.m.

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